Bots and Cheaters.

[LianaThorne]

I don't know why they don't just do a check if the bots are under the map and ban based on that. Plenty of other games ban people who go OOB on the map and there's no real reason to go OOB under the aetheryte unless you want to advertise RMT in say chat.

Then they'd have to patch up all of the holes above ground that lead under the map or people who stumble upon those will get hit as well.

[Amarande]

Anything out of bounds should be a slam dunk for auto detecting. Start by disconnecting and if it continues, then start start issuing suspensions. Likewise they could actually implement client side anti-cheat mechanisms so these things are detected much sooner

Out of bounds DC is easy to propose and difficult to implement, even more difficult to implement without creating a whole kettle of extra problems. Blizzard started doing it with WoW, and it's taken literal years to get it into some semblance of order. Are you willing to deal with that many years of such bugs?

Areas with rough terrain become nightmares. Trip over a rock and get detected as a hack attempt and DC'd. Bit of latency during mountain climbing? Next thing you're off the mount... server altogether because it thought you were trying to phase into the mountain. Happened TOO often in Highmountain, in Legion.

A small, simple placement error on the part of the server goes from a minor annoyance to having to get a hold of customer support. Exile's Reach did it a bunch with the boat at the start, to the point where it was even thought that if you got disconnected on the boat you might have to delete your character and try again. Real issue: server placed your feet an inch below the deck, so every time you tried to reconnect it would go "nope, you're out of bounds" and re-DC you until you filed a ticket.

Some areas in Shadowlands still have the issue. Fall down the proverbial well and the momentum will result in you being seen as trying to hack below the floor, so instead of just dying from the fall like you used to ... DC loop till you file a ticket.

Which means stuck characters would likely often go from a matter of hitting Return or typing /stuck to having to file a ticket. Hope SE decides to implement an automated ticket service for stuck characters like Blizzard had to, then. Given how long it takes them to implement any changes to customer support? Not holding my breath, there.

It is unfortunate that this game seems unusually vulnerable to bots, and it's not just because of the lack of an anti cheat system (which has its own problems: most significantly, performance hits, and loss of a non-trivial amount of player revenue when the graphics modding RP players quit in droves), but also because the gameplay in this game is so deterministic that legitimate player improvement literally equates to trying to play more and more like a robot (as in almost all modes there's a definitive one, static, best way to play) - meaning the SNR between bots and repetitive clockwork player behavior is even worse. And I'm not sure of a solution other than how the game already goes (the impact of bulk gil farming being fairly minimal due to the fact that bulk gil is simply not that significant in most cases).

[mythgraven]

This is something that the devs simply do not care about. If they did, it'd be fixed.

People are arguing about burden of proof and not thinking it through. There is zero, zero reason for your character model to be clipped under the map.

A two strike system for this would *decimate* this problem instantly, but they don't care enough to roll out a flag system for it.

Strike one, your character model trips an under the map trigger and you are instantly disconnected and booted from the game for three hours.

Strike two, permanent ban.

Still, there will be people who will argue that's not fair to real players, as if you could somehow accidentally get yourself under there daily.

[Avatre]

Easy solution to the bots that run underground, make the entirety of ALL the undersides of each map a death wall. They go down? Dead instantly.

[Amarande]

A two strike system for this would *decimate* this problem instantly, but they don't care enough to roll out a flag system for it.

Strike one, your character model trips an under the map trigger and you are instantly disconnected and booted from the game for three hours.

Strike two, permanent ban.

Still, there will be people who will argue that's not fair to real players, as if you could somehow accidentally get yourself under there daily.

So, just ban all the people who don't have stellar Internet (like, e.g., all our Oceanic players that don't settle for "You might get to run one alliance raid a month with queue times" Materia)?

Again, this kind of thing, on a technical scale, happens a lot more often than you think. In other words, where you don't - on your end - yourself move into walls or the ground, but where the server nonetheless receives a movement request from the client that would place you there.

Moving quickly in rocky terrain? That vector might very well have initially pushed you into the wall, or across a bump in the ground (that's what got the people in Highmountain in WoW). Falling? Especially difficult to adjudicate, because of gravitational acceleration meaning that falling from a large height often has you moving far faster than any otherwise legitimate movement in the game (that's why even after years of such features WoW still has you stuck in DC loops if you fall in certain places).

I'm not sure if the boat situation is possible in XIV because I'm trying to remember if there's anywhere where the terrain realistically "rocks" (that's what happened with Exile's Reach, the boat does bob a fair bit and if you DC or log out on it, if the boat lurches up while you're logged out, now you're in the floor when you log back in at your current coordinates) ...

Note, "DC loops." It is annoying enough in WoW, where you must file a stuck character ticket to fix it. You willing to take a permanent ban because you fell somewhere, got DC'd, you log back in and your character is still in mid fall so the client immediately sends a through-the-floor vector accordingly?

Don't forget this likely affects casual players the most, they're the ones that do lots of overworld running around, crafting, RPing, housing (would the common housing practice of clipping through your own furnishings to get out of decoration corners/hide secret rooms trip it?), and sightseeing (remember those vistas with odd convoluted jumping you need to do to reach them?).

Latency makes it all worse, of course.

Easy solution to the bots that run underground, make the entirety of ALL the undersides of each map a death wall. They go down? Dead instantly.

Again, the problem is that's likely to get folks on even a technical attempt (that you don't see graphically on your side) to go through the floor. Do we really want sprouts dropping dead at random to get rid of bots?

[mythgraven]

So, just ban all the people who don't have stellar Internet (like, e.g., all our Oceanic players that don't settle for "You might get to run one alliance raid a month with queue times" Materia)?

Again, this kind of thing, on a technical scale, happens a lot more often than you think. In other words, where you don't - on your end - yourself move into walls or the ground, but where the server nonetheless receives a movement request from the client that would place you there.

Moving quickly in rocky terrain? That vector might very well have initially pushed you into the wall, or across a bump in the ground (that's what got the people in Highmountain in WoW). Falling? Especially difficult to adjudicate, because of gravitational acceleration meaning that falling from a large height often has you moving far faster than any otherwise legitimate movement in the game (that's why even after years of such features WoW still has you stuck in DC loops if you fall in certain places).

I'm not sure if the boat situation is possible in XIV because I'm trying to remember if there's anywhere where the terrain realistically "rocks" (that's what happened with Exile's Reach, the boat does bob a fair bit and if you DC or log out on it, if the boat lurches up while you're logged out, now you're in the floor when you log back in at your current coordinates) ...

Note, "DC loops." It is annoying enough in WoW, where you must file a stuck character ticket to fix it. You willing to take a permanent ban because you fell somewhere, got DC'd, you log back in and your character is still in mid fall so the client immediately sends a through-the-floor vector accordingly?

Don't forget this likely affects casual players the most, they're the ones that do lots of overworld running around, crafting, RPing, housing (would the common housing practice of clipping through your own furnishings to get out of decoration corners/hide secret rooms trip it?), and sightseeing (remember those vistas with odd convoluted jumping you need to do to reach them?).

Latency makes it all worse, of course.



Again, the problem is that's likely to get folks on even a technical attempt (that you don't see graphically on your side) to go through the floor. Do we really want sprouts dropping dead at random to get rid of bots?

Do we really want sprouts unable to gather couerl pup whiskers for a required MSQ quest, and deducting correctly that the bot deterrent measures in this game are *pitiful*?

[PredatoryCatgirl]

yeah, all legitimate players run around underground...

people on the autism spectrum run cheat programs.

please explain how "legitimate" players are doing this and accessing quest givers as well as mobs from below ground... please. I have seen bugs and glitches in this game, but I cannot say that that behaviour is one of them.

Running underground is not botting. Its cheating. More than likely someone is actually controlling the character, which means not botting. Learn what words mean before you say that mine are wrong.

[Jeeqbit]

People are arguing about burden of proof and not thinking it through. There is zero, zero reason for your character model to be clipped under the map.

False as I said previously. I believe SE had to change some FPS settings because it allowed people to fall through as well.

Still, there will be people who will argue that's not fair to real players, as if you could somehow accidentally get yourself under there daily.

You can't daily but it could happen more than once throughout 10 years of playing like it did for me. I was on a laptop at the time with 15 or less FPS, so I don't know if that affected it, but I haven't had it happen for years now.

[Avatre]

So, just ban all the people who don't have stellar Internet (like, e.g., all our Oceanic players that don't settle for "You might get to run one alliance raid a month with queue times" Materia)?

Again, this kind of thing, on a technical scale, happens a lot more often than you think. In other words, where you don't - on your end - yourself move into walls or the ground, but where the server nonetheless receives a movement request from the client that would place you there.

Moving quickly in rocky terrain? That vector might very well have initially pushed you into the wall, or across a bump in the ground (that's what got the people in Highmountain in WoW). Falling? Especially difficult to adjudicate, because of gravitational acceleration meaning that falling from a large height often has you moving far faster than any otherwise legitimate movement in the game (that's why even after years of such features WoW still has you stuck in DC loops if you fall in certain places).

I'm not sure if the boat situation is possible in XIV because I'm trying to remember if there's anywhere where the terrain realistically "rocks" (that's what happened with Exile's Reach, the boat does bob a fair bit and if you DC or log out on it, if the boat lurches up while you're logged out, now you're in the floor when you log back in at your current coordinates) ...

Note, "DC loops." It is annoying enough in WoW, where you must file a stuck character ticket to fix it. You willing to take a permanent ban because you fell somewhere, got DC'd, you log back in and your character is still in mid fall so the client immediately sends a through-the-floor vector accordingly?

Don't forget this likely affects casual players the most, they're the ones that do lots of overworld running around, crafting, RPing, housing (would the common housing practice of clipping through your own furnishings to get out of decoration corners/hide secret rooms trip it?), and sightseeing (remember those vistas with odd convoluted jumping you need to do to reach them?).

Latency makes it all worse, of course.



Again, the problem is that's likely to get folks on even a technical attempt (that you don't see graphically on your side) to go through the floor. Do we really want sprouts dropping dead at random to get rid of bots?

Yes, anyone who falls under the floor, whether by accident or purpose, should be instantly killed to have to respawn.

[Kes13a]

Running underground is not botting. Its cheating. More than likely someone is actually controlling the character, which means not botting. Learn what words mean before you say that mine are wrong.

oh, pardon me, the thread is about botting and cheating.

learn what the thread is about before blowing your top. legitimate players, are not going to get banned because they are running around the game underground all the time. that was my point. as for being underground, I hate to point this out, by many bots do just that, so maybe learn the issue before venting off.